Child of God

You've
got to admire James Franco's chutzpah. After directing a few vacant things that
barely count as movies, he just started going around buying the rights to
classics like he was William Wyler or John Huston. After "As I Lay Dying," last year’s fascinating, if perhaps undercooked
Faulkner adaptation, Franco has returned with a stab at Cormac McCarthy’s early
novel "Child of God." People who were worried when Franco snapped
up the option to "Blood Meridian," McCarthy’s
‘unfilmable’ masterpiece, won’t have their fears allayed any by a good faith
but blank retelling of McCarthy’s first major statement. Franco clearly wants
to be a provocative artist with the chops to bring major literature to life,
but he has no relationship with the camera. Every cut has the same effect as
the curtain raising on the next act of a play: here’s some more action, for
better or worse. It’s like "Dogville"
with the sets filled in; watchably eccentric but rudderless.

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Scott
Haze makes a hell of a showing for himself as Lester Ballard, a half-mad,
backwoods degenerate with no place in polite society. "Child of God" starts with Ballard losing every piece of property he
owns except his rifle and retreating into the woods. He squats in a vacant
shack, finds the body of a dead girl, brings her back to the shed and then
starts courting her. Things somehow get worse from there. Before long a posse
(led by Franco, in a small, unmemorable role) are chasing him into the hills
looking for some form of closure after his twisted reign of terror. Oh, there’s
also a mostly useless, though incredibly entertaining sidebar featuring the
always-welcome Tim Blake Nelson as the sheriff and Jim Parrack as his deputy.
They don’t do much of anything but their no-bullshit chemistry works like
gangbusters and Franco was smart to focus as much time on them as he does, even
if it meant losing some of the book’s better passages. They’re like a Kentucky
Fried Statler and Waldorf, and they’re a welcome respite from Haze’s literal
go-for-broke turn, even if they don’t do much more than arrest him a few times.

It’s
a curious thing. What impulse leads most directors to seek out great books and
turn them into films? Presumably the writer has conjured up a set of events so
compelling in a totally unique milieu and he or she wants to see it brought to
life. James Franco isn’t like most directors. After publishing a few books,
going to a couple of expensive grad schools and turning up in an adaptation of
a few of his short stories, it’s clear that Franco’s approach to movies is about
respect for the word above all else. "As I Lay Dying" frequently stopped its
not-terribly urgent narrative so that characters could stare into the camera
and read passages of the book aloud. Its one cinematic device, frequent
split-screen, was apparently chosen to fit more of Faulkner’s prose into its
nearly two hour runtime. "Child of God"
has no interest in breaking the fourth wall but sure does plenty of staring.
Cinematographer Christina Voros’ handheld camera tries to keep up with our
‘hero’ as he defiles a body, foams at the mouth, cries like an infant over his
losses, defecates in the woods, and does himself and others repeated harm.
Franco gracelessly follows Haze from one sordid misadventure to the next with
no feeling for why McCarthy made all these decisions the first time around.
It’s a great ad for the book because what’s missing from the film’s conception
of the characters is all on the page. And despite a…well, one hesitates to use
the term ‘star-making’ about a performance so deliberately hideous and
grotesque, but a grippingly insane performance from the badger-like Haze,
there’s just too much silence where their ought to be prose.

Which
isn’t to say the film is without merit. It is utterly fascinating to see
classic literature re-enacted as if it were theatre, and it takes courage to
grab up something as iconic in its darkness as "Child of God" and just play it straight. It’s as if Haze decided to
put on the most perverse one-man show imaginable and Franco was there to catch
it all. This isn’t the best way to get at the beauty of an author’s worldview
(even one as flamboyantly scabrous as McCarthy’s) as it’s got no poetry of its
own but it’s evidence of respect. Franco has been doing whatever the hell he’s
felt like for the last few years and it’d be easy to coast on meatless
supporting roles in the indies that come his way, but when you consider that he
could be Zach Braff and do exactly what people expect him to, Franco starts to
look a lot more fearless. He may just be the coolest kid in class trying to
encourage everyone to pay attention to the English teacher, but there’s
something noble in that. The day he figures out what to do with his camera,
he’s going to graduate to artist and we may have a properly excellent director
on our hands.